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April 25, 2013

(++++) A NEW LOVE-HATE RELATIONSHIP

Microsoft made a number of
bold decisions, some better than others, in developing and launching its latest
operating system. For the first time since the days of Windows 3.1, it probably
had no choice. The world’s biggest software company is the world’s biggest because of two primary product lines:
operating systems and its Office
productivity suite. Both products are strongly tied to creativity using
personal computers, but the move of users away from desktops and laptops has
become a major and widely reported trend, with significant implications
throughout the industry. Ignoring the trend would imperil Microsoft’s very
underpinnings and its preeminence in the software field. But embracing it fully
creates a serious problem: portable devices such as smartphones and tablets are
very poor for content creation – they are small, clumsy and generally lack the
power of desktop and laptop machines. Although this may not always be true –
users who grow up with a significantly reduced form factor and a focus on mobility
will surely learn, over time, to produce creative material with portable units
of various types – for now, Microsoft cannot afford to turn its back on the
desktop-and-laptop-based world in which it made its mark and where it still
dominates other companies by far.

And so we have Windows 8, an operating system that
tries to straddle the line between traditional and mobile computing. Like most
compromises and transitional products, it is not fully satisfying from either perspective;
but unlike most, it is more satisfying than not in both uses.The new operating system is designed for
phones, tablets, laptops, desktops and servers, has a strong emphasis on
touchscreen capabilities, and is very clearly intended primarily for non-work
purposes. It is fun to use and makes consuming
information more enjoyable than any previous Windows version, but it makes producing documents and presentations
more difficult – relying, implicitly, on the understandable conservatism of
corporations that makes them very unlikely to abandon Windows-based computing
even when an operating system is not created with their needs in mind.

Microsoft can get away with
this in Windows 8 and maybe Windows 8.5 (if Microsoft creates one), but
probably not when Windows 9 or Windows 10 comes along – by that time, a few
years down the road, either there will be a much larger move to mobile and
touchscreen computing, or Microsoft will have to think more seriously about the
implications of its design for the users who form the backbone of its success.

In any case, what we have
now is Microsoft’s determination to maintain a single core operating system for
multiple uses, and one that has a single graphical user interface (GUI). This
is good for people who regularly switch among various hardware platforms and
good for developers, who can create programs – which, yes, Microsoft has now
joined the crowd in calling “apps” – for a single operating system and have
them function on a multitude of devices. The Windows 8 GUI, called Modern
(previously, and less pleasantly, “Metro”), is attractive to look at, a snap to
use on mobile devices, and often very frustrating in an office environment. Its
non-overlapping Start Screen windows (called tiles), which are customizable in
certain ways but not in others, are clearly touch-based, as are its basic
controls. The look is so stripped-down as to be sparse – which is not an issue
on smartphone or tablet screens, but does make a difference on larger monitors
in an office. Use of the Start Screen’s tiles is intelligent and largely
intuitive on a touch basis, but clumsy and uncomfortable when using a keyboard
and mouse. This is a great operating system for phone and tablet users who want
to spend their time visiting social networks, going shopping, and watching
YouTube videos – and it is a significantly more-secure Windows than ever, which
is a major enhancement that will be particularly important to mobile users,
even if they are unaware of it. Windows 8 makes it easy to find, download and
install apps (which, as part of the improved security, must be
Microsoft-approved), and it simply looks good enough to compete with anything
running Apple or Android operating systems.

The reality is that Windows
8 is deliberately designed for information consumers,
not for information creators, and it
may be that Microsoft sees “knowledge workers” as a decreasing part of its
market – which, statistically, is an accurate perception, since the total
worldwide use of mobile devices is growing far faster than the use of any computing devices for creative
purposes. Add in the fact that even though Microsoft had $18 billion in revenue
from operating systems last year, that is less than one-quarter of its total
revenue, and you have a good reason for the company to focus on mobile users
interested primarily in entertainment rather than on office workers in creative
environments – whose organizations are generally slow to adopt new operating
systems anyway.

So, to be fair to Windows 8,
it is necessary to look at what it does rather than what it does not do. And
what it does is really very impressive. In addition to its enhanced security,
this operating system boots and shuts down considerably more quickly than
Windows 7 did. It allows easy connectivity – part of its overall mobile focus –
so users can enter a single user name and password on Microsoft’s Live.com and
have instant authentication for tablets, desktops and laptops. Windows 8
verifies each time it starts that it has not been tampered with (Microsoft
calls this Secure Boot); it updates daily and automatically; and it includes
antivirus software that is enabled by default.

Windows 8 largely turns its
back on multitasking – a major strength of prior Microsoft operating systems
for knowledge workers, but a potential confusion for people who simply want to
obtain and use information simply. The tiles on the Start Screen represent
installed apps; click a tile and the application fills the screen; but there is
no way to see multiple apps or Web pages at the same time (although it is
possible to split the screen between two apps – but only by having one app take
up most of the screen and the other take up only a sliver of it). To switch
applications, users return to the Start Screen and click on another tile – no
big deal for mobile devices, but an irritation in an office environment.
Furthermore, the new Charms feature is really oriented 100% toward
touchscreens: it is a set of hidden menus accessible by swiping toward the
right side of a touchscreen, but reachable with a mouse only by the awkward
process of bringing the cursor to a corner of the screen, then moving the mouse
downward, then clicking on whatever Charm you may want – such as the
on/off/sleep control. This is an underlying characteristic of the new Windows 8
interface: to keep things simple and elegant-looking, Microsoft hides important
information under multiple clicks of a mouse or multiple touchscreen layers – a
minor inconvenience for smartphone and tablet information consumers but a
significant one for knowledge workers.

The easiest way around the
inconveniences for Windows 8 for people seeking to create information rather
than consume it is simply to go to the desktop, which is still part of the
operating system and easy to place as a tile on the Start Screen – then just click
the tile and the desktop appears (as an alternative, you can press the Windows
key + D). Yes, this move from Start Screen to desktop is an extra step, but it
is a small one, and if it becomes a real irritant, there are numerous free or
low-cost third-party apps that eliminate it and let you boot directly to the
desktop, as in Windows 7. But unless the extra few seconds seem really crucial,
there is little reason to use those apps, because the Modern interface or
something very like it is the direction in which all operating systems are
going. Becoming accustomed to this is a good idea – and really, an extra click
or two will not slow anyone down.

What does take getting used to is what happens when you are on the desktop in Windows 8: Microsoft
has eliminated the Start button, a notorious design decision that the company
says is irreversible but that it really ought to rethink. There are other ways
to get to all the Start functions in Windows 8; and, again, there are free or
low-cost third-party apps to restore the button. But in this case, unlike the
Start Screen situation, it is hard to see the benefit of living with
Microsoft’s change, especially since Windows 8 no longer has controls in a
consistent place. Leaving the Start button as a beacon of consistency would
seem to be sensible. For that matter, additional status bars and menus would be
very helpful in the knowledge-worker environment – the stripped-down
presentation of information in Windows 8, while entirely appropriate for small
screens and information consumers, is an ongoing annoyance on the
information-creation side of things. It can be fun to discover certain
unexpected features of Windows 8 – for example, if you are searching for
something specific, you can simply start typing directly on the Start Screen,
and the search box will open automatically. But if you just want to get down to
creative work, Windows 8 does not make that easy – and is not designed to do
so.

When you think about it,
what Microsoft has done with Windows 8 is the opposite of what it has done in
the past. Several times in recent history, it has tried to take its big-screen,
office-oriented interface and modify it for use on small screens – and the
results were very poor, causing many people to write Microsoft off as a major
player in an increasingly mobile world. Windows 8 shows that rumors of
Microsoft’s collapse were vastly premature. Windows 8 is a small-screen
interface from the start, elegantly designed and fully competitive with the
offerings from Apple and Google. It will be a real pleasure for phone and
tablet users, unlike previous repurposed Microsoft operating systems. But this
time, what the company has done is to start with a small-screen orientation and
adapt it to larger screens and an office environment. That transfers the
awkwardness from mobile users to knowledge workers – and, based strictly on
numbers, that is the right thing for Microsoft to do. The explosion of
worldwide use of mobile devices and the ongoing move toward touchscreens either
in tiny phone size or somewhat larger tablet size mean that first-time users of
hardware are far more likely to be information consumers than information
producers – and far more likely to value simplicity and attractiveness than
adaptability and multifunctional capability. Microsoft got Windows 8 right for a changing
world – and of course there is nothing compelling business users and other
content creators from switching to the new operating system (many are only now
making the change from XP to Windows 7, having bypassed Vista entirely).

Windows 8 is not all things
to everyone – and is not intended to be. Microsoft has seen the future of
computing devices, a future that extends well beyond the customary notion of
computers, and has taken the first step toward producing an operating system
that will thrive in that future. Windows 8 works perfectly well, if sometimes
frustratingly, with legacy hardware, which is what desktop and laptop computers
are becoming – and it is worth remembering that all Windows operating systems
are themselves built upon Microsoft’s ultimate legacy product, MS-DOS. Windows
8 has flaws and frustrations, but it shows that Microsoft has figured out where
the world of information consumption is going – and has staked out a strong
position there. This operating system may not be a game changer, but Windows 8 shows that Microsoft remains a game player, and is determined to embrace a
future that will look very different to users from the computing past.